Path's End
by Ikonopeiston
Summary: AU This is the backstory of Dajorn, an original character introduced in "Shades of Scarlet"


The world in which this story takes place is the sole property of Square-Enix.

A/N This is the backstory for the original character introduced at the end of "Shades of Scarlet".

I was asked why anybody would voluntarily enter the back door of the House of Pain. There are many reasons; this explains one of them.

**PATH'S END**

Dajorn looked around his studio. The shadowless lighting made all the items filling the space stand out with an almost unnatural clarity. Two easels stood, pointing toward the distant skylight, each bearing an unfinished painting. He walked over to one, critically observing the sinuous curves of the lines tautly confining the shapes they described. Running one paint-stained forefinger along the ridges of the heavily applied pigment, he smiled with satisfaction. Yes, these just might be the start of one of his best and most productive periods of work. Apart from these two paintings, most of the studio was empty; the majority of his output had gone to his dealer who would mete it out to an appreciative body of connoisseurs who were beginning to seek out the name Dajorn as a desirable one to have in their collections.

It was a good time to be alive and to be Dajorn. The man himself laughed at his own self-satisfaction. He was a tall man, with dark hair worn carelessly shoved back from his lean face. Although he had celebrated his fortieth birthday a few months ago, he looked younger and, on days like this, felt like a boy again. Everything was going exactly right, far better than he had planned in his most ambitious dreams. He had earned enough from his art to buy this house, set in a good district of Luca, where he could work and live with his growing family. The days of penny-pinching and scratching out time to paint while still holding a job to pay the bills were past. He was a success! The sole problem was that he produced too much and his dealer had warned him against saturating the market.

"Let them bid up the work. If there's too much available, they won't think it's worth as much. Slow down," the dealer had advised and Dajorn had gladly consented to let the more knowledgeable man handle the marketing of his paintings, doling them out as seemed best and most profitable to both the painter and the dealer. Now, with enough work completed to assure a steady flow of income, it seemed a good time for a vacation at the Moonflow. It was there Dajorn had met his wife, Miura, and it was there that he had decided to take his family for a week of lazing in the sun and visiting the sights.

He picked up his painting knife and moved toward the covered palette then put it down again with a rueful grin. The paintings would be there when he got back. The shapes and ideas were firmly fixed and he could take up exactly where he had left off.

With a last contented look around, he left the studio and started down the spiral staircase which led to the residential floors of the house. The entire center of the building was bathed by light from the atrium which was crowned by a glass dome high above. Thus the small group gathered near the outer door was clearly visible from his first step down the stair.

"Daddy, daddy, hurry up. Let's go!" Elere, almost six years old, threw herself at her father and wrapped her spindly arms around his legs. "Let's go. I want to ride the Shoopuf."

Dajorn reached down and swung her up onto his shoulder. "Who's been talking to you about shoopufs?"

Elere giggled and pointed to her big brother, Groot. "He told me you let him ride one when he was my age."

Groot, who had just become ten years old and considered himself now a man, did not deign to reply, busying himself with piling the family's luggage by the door. "The hover'll be here pretty soon. You ready, Dad?"

"I'm all set. Where's your mother and Arthal?" He swung the little girl down and set her on her own feet.

"I'm right here, Dajorn, just making sure I have the baby's food packed." Miura came through the right hand door, balancing their six-month-old son on her hip. "It won't be a very merry vacation if Arthal is bawling for his dinner all the time."

"Right you are!" Dajorn pecked her on the cheek and, taking a step back, looked at his four hostages to fortune with a proud eye. They were a handsome lot, healthy, happy and all his. Life was indeed good.

-X-

It had been perfect week. They had admired the clouds of pyre-flies which drifted with apparent aimlessness over the waters every night. Groot had discovered some boys his own age and they had run in a wild sun-browned pack almost every day. Elere had ridden the shoopufs not just once but on two round trips - one for fun, the other as part of a day trip to Guadosalam where they had explored that strange and shadowed town at the edge of the FarPlane. They had discussed going on to the Thunder Plains and spending a night or so there, thus prolonging their vacation, but Dajorn hungered to get back to his brushes and knives and kept dreaming of the paintings he had in his mind, so this was to be their last day and they would spend it as a family on the sands of the beach.

Dajorn got the group settled on their towels and blankets safely above the water line, made sure the older children knew not to go into the water without him and positioned a parasol to shield Miura and Arthal from the direct rays of the sun. When all was arranged to his satisfaction, he asked, "Who wants some sweet snow?"

"Me!" "Me!" "That would be wonderful." It was an unanimous vote for the confection which was only to be found here at the Moonflow.

"OK. I'll go up and get some for all of us."

"Want me to help you, Dad?" Groot knew his manners.

"No, thanks son. I can manage. You stay here and take care of your sister and your mother." With a contented smile, Dajorn walked up to the little group of vending stands near the beach road.

"Five sweet snows, please. A cherry, two oranges, a blackberry and a vanilla." He handed the Hypello merchant some coins and took the tray the little blue-skinned being held out to him.

The happy hubbub of vacationers was broken by a sudden silence then a cacophony of screams which almost, but not quite, masked the sound of a turbulence in the waters. Dajorn spun around and dropped the frozen treats as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

A monstrous shape, like the head of a gigantic sea beast, had risen from the placid surface of the Moonflow casting a shadow where no shadow should be. The once sugar white sands of the beach had become a writhing, hopping, crawling bed of Sinspawn attacking whatever they found. Sin had come with all his minions to again devastate a part of Spira with his unpredictable onslaught.

Dajorn strained to locate his family in the maelstrom of people and fiends. In the dimmed light, all seemed the same. Then he saw them. Groot was striking out at the beasts with a sand shovel, shielding the terrified Elere with his thin body. Miura clutched to her breast a bloody scrap that Dajorn realized in horror must be all that was left of the baby Arthal. He told himself to run to their aid but his legs seemed bound to the ground and he could not force them to move. As he watched, Groot fell and did not rise, then Elere, and finally Miura was dragged down and covered by the swarming Spawn. Dajorn dropped to his knees and began crawling as fast as he could, not toward the spot his family had died but away, toward the woods and safety. He heard himself sobbing and knew his emotion was not grief but fear. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt the stirrings of the disgust which would dominate his remaining time on the planet. Coward! Coward! Coward!

-X-

There are places in any human settlement in which the less public demands of the citizenry can be met, indeed, can be catered to. All ordinary towns and cities have whorehouses as well as places where the knowledgeable can purchase illicit drugs among additional proscribed items and many have establishments where other, less understood, needs are accommodated. In his wanderings, for he never returned to the bright, clean house in Spira, Dajorn learned to ferret out these houses and try to find his atonement in them. He was flogged many times for the pleasure of a certain class of clientele and raped, both with natural and foreign objects, by men who found that to be their only path to release. Sometimes a woman who had been subjected to mistreatment herself would violate him as a proxy retribution for her pain.

None of this made the memory of what he had done at the MoonFlow any less agonizing for Dajorn. He told himself over and over that had he tried to save his family he would only have perished with them for he was no Warrior but only a painter who could no longer paint. With all his heart, he wished he had been brave enough to die at their sides or at least while trying to reach them. Instead, he had crawled, like a worm, on his belly to the refuge of the forest and had hidden there, hearing the screams and howls until the sound of another great splashing signaled the disappearance of Sin and the return of relative safety. He found he had soiled himself and crept more deeply into the forest until he happened upon a little stream and could make himself fairly presentable. Then he numbly commenced his journey in search of expiation.

Over the months, his back became marked with the tracings of scars so that those who used him must redouble their efforts in order to leave their personal brand on him. He bought his own scourge and used it on his own shoulders, feeling that he would be less tender to himself than his torturers. He hid himself among the most lowly he could find. It was widely believed that the rising painter Dajorn had died in the latest Sin attack at the Moonflow so that his works commanded ever higher prices in the knowledge that there would be no more. Only his dealer knew that the artist was not dead, for he sent small sums of money at irregular intervals to various addresses which he has given by messenger. So Dajorn survived but did not live.

Like a moth flying in decreasing circles around the flame which will burn his wings and consign him to death, Dajorn in his aimless wandering came back to the road from D'jose toward the Moonflow. He was on foot, carrying his belongings in a worn case this time, not riding in state in the comfort of a hover and he saw the Crusader encampment he had not noticed the last time he had been along this path.

With a vague, nonsensical thought of volunteering to act as a target during a live ammunition exercise, he sat down near the edge of the military buildings and looked about him. He saw the young men in their brilliant uniforms and the taint of coward had never seemed more galling to him, not even just after the deaths of his family. These men were willing to die to protect him and those like him and he did not even have the courage to cut his own throat. He gagged but only a thin fluid came up. He had not eaten lately and so could not even vomit successfully.

There was a large ornate structure behind him with a banner proclaiming, in large letters, that it was a HOUSE OF PLEASURE. With a wry smile, he wondered if they could use a middle-aged he-whore who craved discipline. He might as well call himself what he had become. Perhaps that ultimate degradation would deaden him to his pain and he would no longer wake screaming from dreams of that day. Maybe one of his customers would overdo the discipline part and accidentally kill him. That would be good.

He had thought it might grow easier as time passed. It did not. Back in the days when he had been happy in the house filled with light and laughter if anyone had asked him if he was a brave man he would have responded that he supposed he was as brave as any other man; if his family was attacked and so forth, but it did not really pertain to him. His job was to make beautiful images on canvas. Now he knew the answer to that question he had never asked himself. He was not a man of courage nor of honour. He was a coward without even the will to take himself off the face of the planet he disgraced by continuing to live. He stood up suddenly, unable to bear the company of his own thoughts any longer.

The smaller building behind the House of Pleasure caught his attention. He wondered what it was and turned his steps in that direction.

-X-

"OK. You understand what the deal is? You get a day to back out if you want to. Anyway you have to think about it for a day before we let you sign up. You understand? You know you have to go in there and talk to a doctor before you go any further with this? You understand?" The man behind the desk seemed like an earnest sort and one who had repeated these same words many times in the past.

"I understand." Dajorn sighed. He had been given a fistful of literature basically reprising the formal speech the desk man had made at the beginning of the interview. They were careful at this House of Pain and did not permit just anyone to pass through the red door. This place was not unlike other haunts Dajorn had frequented in his futile search for the ultimate penance. Men volunteered to be beaten and raped by those whose pleasure it was to do such things. The pay was good and some of those volunteers found their own pleasure in submission to such treatment. However, there was one additional facility offered in this modest, unlabeled establishment. Those lost in despair or otherwise longing for the peace of extinction could volunteer and find death through the scarlet door. Sanity had to be proved, hence the chat with the doctor, and a day's contemplation of the decision was required. After that, it was accepted that the petitioner was in his right mind and that his mind was set on dying. No more questions would be asked.

The routine was simple. The registered suicide would come to the House of Pain, undress completely and don a plain linen robe tied with laces at the neck. He would wait with others who had chosen this way out until a client requesting such a volunteer came and paid the somewhat exorbitant cost of the service. Then the man selected by lot to be next would go into the room and die by whatever means the client wished to use. It was generally understood that pain would be a part of the procedure and that once through the door no retreat was possible.

When he had convinced the doctor that he was neither insane nor impulsive, Dajorn walked away to find a room for the night, the night he hoped would be his last. He had given a false name to the doctor and had the feeling that he was not the first to do so under similar circumstances. It had been a long time since he had used his own name. Yet as he went inside the inn, there was a unaccustomed lightness in his step as is noticed in one who after a long and arduous journey sees his destination on the near horizon. He felt the leaping hope in his breast that the morrow would grant him the absolution he so fervently desired.

-X-

Dajorn slept well without dreams and woke the next morning with a sense of anticipation and subdued joy. Today would be his final day. He had complete certainty that this day he would be beckoned through that crimson door into death. He hoped his Nemesis would be wise enough to understand that he sought suffering as an atonement for his sin of cowardice and did not wish to be dispatched with a single stroke. Then Dajorn remembered that he had once been an artist and a thought began to take shape in his mind.

He carefully shaved his face and chest, leaving his skin as smooth as possible. No need to shave his underarms nor his pubes. They were not part of the plan.

-X-

When he entered the room through the scarlet door, Dajorn saw a tall man with a mane of dark hair and a lean face - a young man who might have been his son grown to adulthood - and his soul rejoiced. This was a man of courage and intelligence. He could see it burning deep in the brown eyes. He pulled loose the laces at the neck of his garment and let it fall around his feet.

"I want you to kill me, but I do not want to be butchered. Kill me with grace and some style. My body is your canvas, this is your brush." He laid a light hand on the dagger in its sheath on the other man's belt. "Create your vision."

Suffused by a sudden wave of profound love and gratitude, Dajorn leaned forward and kissed the young man full on the lips. The warm moisture of that mouth was like a benediction as understanding seemed to pass between them. He stepped back and, standing proudly for the first time since that horror filled day, faced his executioner. "My name is Dajorn. I am ready."

Monday, June 30, 2008

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